Heather wants another 'shot at happiness' with Macca

be - public, rancorous and extended. And now, from the ashes of the spectacularly imploded Paul

McCartney-Heather Mills marriage, comes the most

staggering twist yet: a year after they split, it is suggested they might - just might - get back together.

According to a Sunday newspaper, Heather poured her heart out to a friend at a hotel in Los Angeles earlier this month.

"She said she’d been devastated by the divorce and has become an emotional wreck," the friend was reported as saying. "Heather doesn’t care about the huge load of money coming her way.

"She said she would gladly give back every penny for another shot at happiness with Paul."

Can this really be true? Surely Heather, who filed those bombshell allegations last October about Sir Paul drinking heavily, beating and

bullying her, calling her a b**** and forbidding her from breast-feeding, cannot want to revive the relationship?

What "shot at happiness" could she be thinking of with a man who she complains was a towering egotist who failed to support and love her?

She has, to be fair, spoken recently in public about "mourning" the end of the romance and attempted to sound dignified and grown-up on American TV last month.

"I just don’t want to speak badly about Paul, you know? I still love him and he’s the father of my child." She added that she missed being married.

But when the cameras aren’t running, it is a different story. Friends of Heather’s say that

although she still claims to be friends with him, and will talk about having a lot of "love" for him (and, incidentally, intends to buy him a present for his 65th birthday on June 18), she does not regret the end of the marriage.

Heather is quite clear in private that she had to leave Paul, even though she knew she would be entering a massive legal tangle. She certainly

doesn’t want him back.

Instead, friends suggest that the one who wants to revive the union is Paul himself, painted as a sad figure filled with anger and lonely regrets.

noon and night". He supposedly seems keener than is appropriate to spend time with her.

Apparently, she feels he has been testing the water to see if she would like to get back together with him.

The view, offered by Heather herself, is that he is the sort of man who needs a woman, and he still believes she is "amazing" and is in awe of her abilities as a mother.

One Heather confidante summed up: "It’s preposterous to suggest that Heather wants to get back with Paul. If anything, it’s the other way around.

"There is no way that she would go back to him in 100 years."

It’s a touchy subject, but Paul’s side feel that the idea of him begging to be taken back can be filed away safely as one of "Heather’s delusions".

One McCartney confidante said that Paul regards Heather as a "rattlesnake" and is merely maintaining civilities for the sake of their

three-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

She is, said another friend, "just the kind of woman who cannot believe that any man would not fancy her. That’s pure Heather".

Officially, Paul’s spokesman Stuart Bell refuses to comment. Unofficially, sources strongly indicate that the former Beatle has no designs on his estranged wife.

Intriguingly, though, it is true to say they are maintaining a closer relationship than has been suspected.

A fuss was made when they were pictured two weeks ago having a ten-minute meeting at a North London restaurant, where Heather handed over Beatrice to her father.

That, though, was the tip of the iceberg, according to both sides. Since the split in May 2006, they have been sharing joint custody of Beatrice. For at least the past six months, the

weekly hand-overs have been friendly, and sometimes quite lengthy.

Phil Hall, who represents Heather, said: "They are getting on really well. Sometimes the hand-overs have been quick, but that will only be because she has come in a helicopter or because they know there’s a photographer watching.

"In reality, they get on far better than people imagine. They have always put on a front for Beatrice’s sake, but it’s not as basic as exchanging pleasantries. At times it’s awkward,

but Paul says 'If it gets a bit rough, it’s the lawyers, not me - you have to leave them to get on with it' and that’s what happens."

Hall said that Paul can spend a long time at Heather’s beach-front home in Hove, just enjoying family time with mother and daughter.

One of Paul’s friends says: "It’s not hanging out, exactly, but it is true that for a few months they have been getting on much better."

This is a rather unexpected turn, as the split has been extremely bitter. After the initial separation, Heather took to living in a cottage on Paul’s Peasmarsh estate, the idea being that

Beatrice would live there all the time, with her parents taking turns to stay.

This fell apart quite quickly because of the hostility between the pair - Sean Ghent, a bodyguard who left McCartney’s employment during the separation, recently said that at first Paul tried to win back Heather and, when this failed, he began to hate her.

Heather found her credit at local shops had been stopped. She was prevented from gaining access to their home in London’s St John’s Wood, and Paul even complained she had been using cleaning

materials without permission.

Heather quickly became seriously short of money, and let it be known that she was particularly appalled that her husband did not want to pay for her security. They communicated only

through lawyers, and levels of animosity

were extremely high.

However, an interim payment, believed to be around £1 million, was made and since then they have been on a more even keel.

The position on the divorce - despite various reported settlements - is that no deal has been formally offered yet, and so none has been accepted.

There was a time, say Heather’s coterie, when she would have walked away for £10 million; now she wants more like £25 million, which still seems pretty reasonable given that Paul is

worth around £725million.

Accountants hired by Heather’s legal team are trying to measure his fortune, and it looks unlikely there will be a resolution until the matter comes to court next year.

So what is on the cards for Paul and Heather in the meantime?

He has just released a new album, Memory Almost Full. He looks a lot thinner than he used to, and it is notable that a lot of the new songs are

suffused with nostalgia for his first wife, Linda.

"I’m going through great struggles, but I’m feeling pretty good," he said in a recent interview.

A couple of dinner dates with socialite Sabrina Guinness came to nothing, and a story about him taking a shine to a blonde opera singer seems to have been so much PR puff.

He is single, and enjoying his time with Beatrice and his grandchildren. He would like to tour with the album, but not until the divorce has been settled, and with it the issue of custody.

By contrast, Heather is planning a retreat from the spotlight. Since being ejected from America’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, she has returned home and is refusing all offers

of TV work.

Heather lives with constant pain from her amputation; it can take her almost two hours to get up and dressed, and she has to exercise to maintain the muscles supporting her prosthetic leg.

The only project she has is a nutrition course at UCL; she sits her exams for a diploma this summer. What she will do with it is a mystery. She was going to launch a range of foods or a café, now she talks about it just as helping her to argue for more people to embrace a vegetarian lifestyle.

In fact, she sounds uncharacteristically down, and has renounced all her charity work - which up to now has embraced landmine charities, animal rights issues, anti-fur campaigns, vegetarianism and a UN goodwill ambassadorship.

Her view is that everything she does is turned into an episode of the Paul-and-Heather soap opera, and she no longer wishes to be involved. Phil Hall says: "She is just interested in looking after Beatrice and making sure that she is in a stable situation. The divorce is none of anyone’s business."

Despite the tranquil surface, there is much anger on both sides. The marriage brought together two ruthless, egotistical, controlling people, each capable of desperately unreasonable behaviour.

Every now and then, the anger from one side will erupt into plain view. This is surely the only explanation for Heather’s suggestion last month that Sir Paul lost his temper with Beatrice.

It is, as is often the case with Heather, almost

impossible to believe - but she made jaw-dropping comparisons between her estranged husband and the actor Alec Baldwin (who called his 11-year-old daughter a "rude, thoughtless little pig") on American radio last month.

She said: "I know a lot of fathers who have spoken to their daughters like that, and I won’t get specific but they do get upset. Alec is a close friend of Paul’s and they have a lot in common. If I wanted to put stuff like that out, oh my God, you would have a heart attack."

No wonder Sir Paul’s advisers still think of her as the enemy. For, no matter how much social energy is expended, and how much decent behaviour is played out in public, they are still very much on opposite sides. Neither is likely to forget that.

In a fortnight, Heather will help Beatrice make her father a birthday card, will make sure their daughter has a gift to give him and will drop her off at a family celebration. Apparently, Heather also plans to give Sir Paul her own gift.

But no one can really pretend that what they have amounts to a friendship. There is not a shred of trust between the former Beatle and the